How the IPCC forgot to mention the pause

[Marotzke] attributed the oversight to a tendency of each group working on each of the 14 chapters to rely on some other chapter to deal with the issue. And anyone who was thinking about it at all thought some other chapter should handle the issue. – CS Monitor

Scientists in the first working group also have tried to tackle the issue of the pause in surface warming that has marked the past 15 years – although they came to the issue a bit late in the process, acknowledges Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg and a lead author on one of the main volume’s chapters.

Some 200 authors involved in the first report met in Hobart, Australia, in January for a final gathering to hammer out wording, in light of reviews they had received on a previous draft.

“We got quite a few review comments on various chapters saying: What’s going on here? We need to assess what we know” about the hiatus, he said during a briefing Friday morning.

He attributed the oversight to a tendency of each group working on each of the 14 chapters to rely on some other chapter to deal with the issue. And anyone who was thinking about it at all thought some other chapter should handle the issue.

The result is a statement that the slowdown in the rate of warming over the past 15 years is – with medium confidence – due equally to natural variability in the climate system and to a combination of changes in what researchers dub climate “forcings”: in this case accumulated aerosols from a spate of midsize volcanic eruptions in the late 1990s, which have a cooling effect, and a decade that spent most of its time on the downside of the sunspot cycle. As the number of sunspots fall, solar radiation reaching Earth is reduced. While those reductions are tiny in absolute numbers, researchers have uncovered mechanisms by which the climate system can amplify the effect of those small changes.

“This does not mean that global warming has stopped, because the ocean is still taking up heat, sea level is still rising, ice is still melting everywhere we look,” Dr. Marotzke said. Instead, he suggested, this likely is a confluence of conditions where, in Yahtzee terms, the system rolled three dice and all came up sixes.

Still, the group, which relies on studies published in peer-reviewed journals for its overviews, didn’t have much to go on, acknowledges Working Group 1’s co-chairman, Dr. Stocker.“I’m afraid to say there is not a lot of published literature that allows us to delve deeper into the required depth of this emerging scientific question,” he says, citing a lack of adequate measurements of ocean heating, especially in the deep ocean, as one hindrance. This is one mechanism scientists have proposed for moderating the rise in surface temperatures.

One explanation that scientists skeptical of this explanation have offered for the failure of climate models to foresee this hiatus holds that the models reconstruct a climate system that is too sensitive to rising CO2 concentrations.

ndeed, the new report modifies slightly the IPCC’s estimate of how touchy the climate is to changes in greenhouse gas levels compared with the reports the IPCC issued in 2007.

Then, researchers estimated that if CO2 concentrations doubled over pre-industrial levels, one could expect global average temperatures to rise by 2 degrees to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 8 degrees F.), with a 3-degree increase as the most likely. Friday’s summary widens that to 1.5 to 4.5 degrees, with no figure given in the summary as a most-likely number.

JC comment: Ok, I appreciate Marotzke’s honesty. But don’t the IPCC authors ever read the newspaper or blogs or anything? How did they miss the fact that the pause is the most important issue in the public debate on climate science, for well over a year now? All this is written for the policy makers, n’est pas? Well of course they might have spotted this in the peer reviewed literature if they hadn’t been so busy with that gate keeping thing.

To me, Marotzke’s statement is much more believable than Michael Oppenheimer’s statement in a PBS interview:

MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER: Well, Roger is completely wrong about the so-called hiatus. That is, the scientists looked at it very carefully. There’s an extensive discussion of it in the detailed background documents will be made public on Monday.

Well, it will be fun to start digging through the WG1 report to find where all this is buried.

Roger Pielke Jr. on twitter sums it up this way:

IPCC–> there is a big difference between saying “we don’t know, emerging area of research” and “nothing to see here, move along”

SPM is a short summary, written as a rather obscure text and finalized by government representatives as a compromise that doesn’t necessarily serve well any real need. Being so obscure it does, however, allow presenting interpretations that serve (or are supposed to serve) the interests of people who present those interpretations.

The Technical Summary should be much more informative and the full text – the full text.

Unfortunately, it is the summary for policymakers and may be the only thing they read. They won’t dig into the 1000-page WG1 text, but may get their staffers to look into it, ideally staffers with some science background who can then explain the highlights to them in simple terms.

Actually I don’t think that AR5 WG1 will have much influence on the politicians in any of its incarnations. Nothing has changed so much from AR4 that it would make any difference. The issues that may change are elsewhere, to some extent in what has been learned about mitigation and policy measures, but perhaps even more in the political attitudes.

People will read an obscure document it in various ways, but nobody will be converted. Politicians may easily continue saying what have been saying before.

I think your wrong. It’s true the media is ignoring this one for some reason (maybe all the blow back?). I think ultimately in the big picture there is a steady drive toward action. Problem is is that it is obviously the wrong approach as even if California stopped emissions altogether it will make almost no difference as I’m sure your well aware of.

If they do succeed in finally building a high speed train (that will not actually be high speed) the construction will probably cause more environmental damage and spew out more CO2 than any savings they’ve had up to now.

Ultimately economic factors will probably still rule in the end I would think?

“Relying heavily on construction, however, the local cement companies have suffered severe damages from the housing market collapse and the Great Recession, while facing environmental regulations from both the state and federal government.

California’s cement industry was supported by its high demand during the housing boom. Mitsubishi couldn’t keep up with the demand and was importing 40 percent of its cement at a Long Beach terminal. Companies couldn’t build additional cement plants because the emission levels had already capped in California, said David Rib, environmental manager at Mitsubishi.”

“And some of that depends on how quickly people switch from driving and flying to using the train, he added. According to the study, entitled “High-speed rail with emerging automobiles and aircraft can reduce environmental impacts in California’s future,” 67% of the construction
pollution for HSR comes from making cement. “But construction is a one-time cost…the benefits continue for the life of the system,” he said.”

There are analysts who have said ridership has been widely exaggerated by the board (I wouldn’t know). Now that most of the high speed part is being eliminated you have to wonder will people just continue to take planes and drive? Will public transit even make a dent in California’s car culture, Will high speed rail be a boondoggle as some predict? Those are separate questions, though, to the fact that the IPCC has obviously had a direct effect in influencing public policy and having an effect on government, business and peoples lives.

California policy is tres stoopid. They cap cement production because of CO2 emission but don’t stop the importing of it from countries that emit even more CO2 in its manufacture then, adding insult to injury, even more CO2 is emitted by the ship that transports it across the Pacific. So they’re making the situation even worse than if they did nothing because CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere making it entirely immaterial where on the planet it’s emitted. Welcome to climate science logic.

ordvic, and the job providing, tax paying, industries continue to flee CA, further eroding their economy. I’m assuming they expect the other forty nine states to prop up their finances, and the current regime may try. Oh how the mighty have fallen!

So the “medium confidence” in the explanation for the pause somehow translates to “extremely likely” for the dominance of AGW? Am I reading this right?

Also, according to Stefan Rahmstorf at RealClimate “Natural internal variability and natural external forcings (eg the sun) have contributed virtually nothing to the warming since 1950 – the share of these factors was narrowed down by IPCC to ± 0.1 degrees.” And that should be consistent with the statement that the pause is “due equally to natural variability in the climate system and to a combination of changes in what researchers dub climate “forcings””.

Maybe they can explain this, maybe I’m just confused, or maybe they just didn’t have time to consider it?

At the same time, Michael Mann said that the heat going into the ocean IS natural variability and therefore the pause is not really a pause or something like that. They need to find one story and stick to it.

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Also, according to Stefan Rahmstorf at RealClimate “Natural internal variability and natural external forcings (eg the sun) have contributed virtually nothing to the warming since 1950 – the share of these factors was narrowed down by IPCC to ± 0.1 degrees.”
”

I agree with Rahmstorf, especially if one realizes that the natural internal variability adds nothing to the long-term trend.

‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html

Pukite you are laboring under the misconception that natural variability must necessarily be a zero sum game. This is patently untrue. Natural variability can potentially change albedo so it’s not a matter of energy moving from one reservoir to another and back but rather more or less energy entering the reservoir from the sun throttled by albedo.

‘The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) Earth radiation budget (ERB) is determined from the difference between how much energy is absorbed and emitted by the planet. Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget that has direct implications for global climate, but the large natural variability in the Earth’s radiation budget due to fluctuations in atmospheric and ocean dynamics complicates this picture.’ http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~jnorris/reprints/Loeb_et_al_ISSI_Surv_Geophys_2012.pdf

I am sure they are large changes in flux but the mean reverts to zero — the main contributor is the SOI, which also has a mean that reverts to zero since the index is calculated as the difference between two pressures..

Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”

Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”

The data is there for all to see. One takes the SOI, apply a scaling and lag-filters the time series, then subtracts it from the global temperature record and the variance is reduced and the pause disappears.

This works for the past 130 years and is expected to work in the future.

You reject real science and real scientists for what reason? This time Josh Willis and Bill Patzert at the NASA page quite clearly saying that this Pacific system adds to temperatures and then cools on a multidecadal scale.

This is by the way a Pacific phenomenon as they say – combining the PDO and ENSO into the multi-decadal IPO. You newly favourite authors are dead wrong because of their exclusive focus on ENSO.

‘ENSO variation goes in both directions. The indications are that ENSO variation added to global surface temperatures between 1976 and 1998. It has been almost 10 years since temperatures peaked in1998. The planet may continue to be cooler over the next few decades as a (decadal) cool La Niña phase of ENSO emerges.’ http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/enso_variation_and_global_warm.html

The pause doesn’t disappear – the pause is natural variability. It is likely to persist for another decade or three.

You ponce around as if you have discovered something new but really it is just more of your shallow and ignorant posturing.

WHT, you say “I predict that ENSO-corrected or SOI-corrected temperature references will become more common”. I agree, and I can see how they can do it, even though they have no idea how ENSO and SOI operate: the difference between modelled and measured temperature can simply be used as ENSO/SOI(/anythingelse) correction.

Denise Adams
I am continually amazed by the lack of knowledge among skeptics that comment here. They are the equivalent of the “low-information voter” that people complain about in our political system here in the USA.

The Chief has a chance to take the PDO and show exactly how that number cancels out the noise on the temperature record. Yet he refuses to do that (cuz he has no skilz) and further can not acknowledge that the SOI is all that is needed to explain the vast majority of the yearly variance over the last 130 years.

I one this one and you don’t even realize it because you are a low-information participant.

I am what you would presume to be a “low information participant.” That does not mean that I’m stupid – or uninformed. I am perfectly aware of what level my “skilz” rank around here, which is why I am so careful not to directly invoke science at a level above my own competency. I haven’t deceived myself into thinking I can figure it out for myself either. I am perfectly clear in my own mind that I cannot solve a “wicked problem”. I have not become so fixated upon finding the pea under the shell that I have lost sight of the fact that we have become involved with in the IPCC process is a swindle: “a direct manipulation of outcome regardless of inputs to a contrived end as desired by the controllers of the process.”

It actually DOES NOT MATTER what the true state of the science is in this process.

The subject of this article is how fourteen chapter authors of the current SPM *all* punted the most important issue in the field to someone else in their working group – to no one at all in effect. WG1 may correct this defect in the full report – but that won’t matter because the organizational function of that report is to be a large, unreadable mass of paper on the desk that policy makers can point to in order to validate their policy positions which are based on the contents of the SPM – AND NOTHING MORE.

The fact that all fourteen chapter authors balked at making any kind of a strong statement on “the pause” in the SPM is a clear indication that there are strong incentives for all of the authors to punt. What these are precisely I don’t know, but it is clear that they are essentially 100% effective over five iterations of the process of protecting the institutional position.

Science is not being advanced by the IPCC process, policy makers are not getting a ‘fair’ assessment of the science, therefore it should be scrapped. QED.

You do not have to understand the source of a 60 Hz audio hum to be able to compensate for it.

Likewise, we have a 130+ year record of the SOI which seems to explain nearly all the fluctuating excursions in the global temperature record. Moreover, these fluctuations appear bounded and have always reverted to the mean.

This stationary property makes the SOI a perfectly adequate candidate to remove the uncertainty in the temperature anomaly time series, including compensating for the pause.

Unfortunately, pointing this out does not feed the UNCERTAINTY MONSTER and that explains why the climate realists laugh at all you fake skeptics … The UNCERTAINTY MONSTER feeds on FUD.

More recent work is identifying abrupt climate changes working through the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Artic Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole and other measures of ocean and atmospheric states. These are measurements of sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure over more than 100 years which show evidence for abrupt change to new climate conditions that persist for up to a few decades before shifting again. Global rainfall and flood records likewise show evidence for abrupt shifts and regimes that persist for decades. In Australia, less frequent flooding from early last century to the mid 1940’s, more frequent flooding to the late 1970’s and again a low rainfall regime to recent times.

Anastasios Tsonis, of the Atmospheric Sciences Group at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and colleagues used a mathematical network approach to analyse abrupt climate change on decadal timescales. Ocean and atmospheric indices – in this case the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation and the North Pacific Oscillation – can be thought of as chaotic oscillators that capture the major modes of climate variability. Tsonis and colleagues calculated the ‘distance’ between the indices. It was found that they would synchronise at certain times and then shift into a new state.

It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.

The correlation of temperature to the PDO is quite obvious. It has been noted thousands of times for more than a decade.

Moreover it is well known that the intensity and frequency of ENSO changes with the PDO. Together the system is known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation – or preferably – the Pacific Decadal Variation. It is well known that the system persist for 20 to 40 years and has added to warming between 1976 and 1998 and has cooled the planet since. The pattern of the PDV suggests the cool mode is likely to persist for a decade to three more.

You only have to look at Figure SPM.1a to see that decadal averages show no pause. The 2001-2010 decade was dominated by a long solar minimum, and even then beat the 90’s that had the famous 1998 El Nino, and it will be easy for this decade to beat the 00’s in turn.
I may later bring out my 40-year HADCRUT4 trend again that shows today we are only 0.1 degrees below the trend line, and have been multiple times in the past, as well as equally 0.1 degrees above the trend line. And, by the way, the 0.16 C/decade trend line agrees with 2 C per doubling transient response, somewhat like the models have. In summary, what we have had for the last 40 years is a trend equivalent to a 2 C per doubling TCR with a natural variability of plus or minus 0.1 degrees around it, and today is no exception.

1. Why from 1970? Why not from 1969, 1968, 1967, …
2. What physics tells you that the GMT trend since 1970 should be a linear trend?
3. What is the physics/statistical significance of the +/- 0.1 degrees above/below the trend line?
4. What happens when you extend these trend lines back in time?
5. What is the relationship with CO2?

I don’t take too much from the charts. I just looked at it and wondered if it was with trend. Steve McIntyre produced a graph showing how the climate models projections don’t match the observed. I think that is Dr Curry’s main point. It looks like McIntyre has a lot of material concerning SPM 1. I haven’t read it all yet. I do think an argument can be made for the ‘pause’ being within a normal oscillation but I’d defer to WebHub and Chief Hydro and their ongoing argument. And the winner is….

ksd, the CO2 effect would have doubled or quadrupled since the beginning of the century, so the end of the record would be where it is clearest. But the “pausists” don’t seem to be interested in anything that happened before 1997, so I think I helped them extend things a bit. What do you think of the “pause” in the context of your figure? Impressed? Game changer? I think not.

Jim D | September 29, 2013 at 7:56 pm |
ksd, the CO2 effect would have doubled or quadrupled since the beginning of the century, so the end of the record would be where it is clearest.
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Doubled or quadrupled, really? How exactly does that happen? From what I know the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has not doubled since the beginning of the century (1900) yet you tell me the effect has doubled or quadrupled.

ksd, in the whole century up to 1950, CO2 rose from 280-310 ppm. It only took until 1980 to rise another 30 ppm and 2000 to rise another 30. It is the rise rate that doubled, and that is what sets the warming rate.

Jim D obviously was talking of the *enhanced* greenhouse effect. That’s the effect from increasing the atmospheric CO2 concentration (and methane, CFCs, etc.) above the stable pre-industrial levels. This enhancement effect increased sharply over the 20th century. The effect of the CO2 that was already there (around 280ppm) isn’t at issue. That effect was to maintain the Earth’s surface 33°C warmer than it would have been without any non-condensable greenhouse gases.

ordvic, from 1980 to now, the 0.5 C temperature rise and 18% CO2 rise means that the effective TCR for CO2 is about 2 C per doubling. This is 50% higher than the 1.3 people like Lewis have estimated. What went wrong? It will be tough to untangle, because whatever his method, he didn’t do the simplest check with reality. Perhaps Steve McI should look at that.

Thanks for that info. I’ll have to think about that. If the pause keeps going (a sideways trend) say for another 15 years how would that affect the postulate? That is why I’d hesitate about any reasoning right now. This other bad chart of mine suggests that still won’t solve the problem. The only way to completely refute the connection would be if it went down without any volcanoes going off in a big way.

Jim D | September 29, 2013 at 8:29 pm |
ksd, in the whole century up to 1950, CO2 rose from 280-310 ppm. It only took until 1980 to rise another 30 ppm and 2000 to rise another 30. It is the rise rate that doubled, and that is what sets the warming rate.
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So, then the rate of temperature rise doubled. Interesting, never heard anyone argue that before. In fact, of late, it looks to have dropped quite dramatically.

ksd, it is kind of obvious that the CO2 growth rate has accelerated from basically zero to its current level which is a record high. It is also obvious that the temperature response follows that rate. I didn’t think that needed to be spelled out, but if it helps, glad to oblige.

Yes, I just posted that above. When you see it in context of the previous pauses you get a better perspective. It is nothing really. Give it more time to get below the -0.1 natural variation at least before you call it something distinct from a random cool perturbation.

Simply look at the HadCRUT4 globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly and you will see the pause.

Duh!”

You do what Max instructed and you will see the signal is compensated very well by a SOI noise signal directed in a cooling direction over the duration of the pause. Since the SOI is bounded and has the properties of reversion to the mean, this pause is only temporary.

That extension shows the global dimming episode due to the aerosol increase as oil became a major contributor too, with more distributed sources, cars. The cooling is focused around advanced population areas, if you examine it spatially. It adds a complication that starting from the 70’s avoids because aerosols ceased to expand spatially by then.

Yea, Jim D. Whatever. There is always a backward explanation. Economists have a lot of them. This is the reason why the most sensible strategy is asking for the predictions first, and then listen … once the predictions are right.

If it only were the troposphere it could possibly be natural variability. But the predicted – and initially observed – stratospheric cooling has stopped as well. That could be another observation that may indicate the lull is not a phantom or coincidence.

Remarkable, there is always an excuse for the failure of the models to accurately model temperatures (i.e. 15 year pause) from climate catastrophists. The deep ocean is taking up the heat or aerosols and volcanoes reduced solar energy. How about “The models suck because they overweight CO2 sensitivity and we have no idea why there has been a pause.”

steven, OK, I had August by mistake, but that month seems to show it pretty well,as do summer, spring and winter, but fall has a warm spot for Europe that seems to cancel some of that cooling. The annual shows the basic cooling regions too but less well. The reason 1910-40 is not good to include as a base period is that 1910 was a solar slump and quite cold. The peak warmth occurred in the 40’s, and the most cooling occurred in the 60’s. That is also the period over which global dimming took place, so if we want to look for the cooling regions, these more focused decades are better.

Jim, I am certain there are papers that claim aerosols were the cause of the cooling but those are based on global emissions. I have yet to see one that shows it is centered around industrial sites. I have also failed to find one that shows the recent temperatures correlate to industrial sites which is something I looked for once the Chinese aerosols excuse came out. I am skeptical of both claims since if there were such a correlation I’m sure it would be well publicized. If you can’t find one either it is a pretty good indication that the correlation doesn’t exist.

Jim, one other thing. If you take the average temperatures when the AMO is going from trough to peak, say for instance from 1910 to 1940, and you compare it with the average temperature from peak to trough, say for instance 1940 to 1970, what would be your initial hypothesis if there didn’t seem to be very much difference?

steven, you can look for Global Dimming on the web. I found a Wikipedia article where it said the cause was likely sulfate aerosols. Since these have a short range, it would make sense that the most affected areas are near the source, so this is consistent with the map. I have seen people try to explain the cooling with AMO, but you will notice that the east US upstream of the AMO is also cool, so that doesn’t fit.

Jim, we can just agree to disagree. I am sticking with the hypothesis that if you average the uptrend and average the downtrend and see little difference that the trend is the cause of the changes. You may feel free to see whatever you wish to see.

Warmists seem to have succeeded in reframing the real issue that was raised by the “pause” in their reported temps. It was the warmists who predicted continuous, substantial increases in temperatures over this period. It was the warmists who pledged their knowledge was to astronomic levels of certainty. It was the warmists who claimed they had correctly modeled the climate, and that even if they hadn’t, the average of a suite of models would accurately predict future temps.

The “pause” doesn’t disprove CAGW. It disproves the certainty, accuracy and omniscience claimed by its acolytes.

manacker, I don’t know if they said 0.2 C per decade specifically for these two decades around 2000 without any uncertainty around it because I can’t find the quote you mean. Even if they did, it is closer to 0.16 C per decade when the “skeptics” were predicting 0 per decade or downwards. 0.16 C per decade is already a 2 C TCR which I am fairly sure was within their uncertainty range, perhaps even at the center of it.

“Did you believe they said every year should be warmer than the previous one, or just every decade, or somewhere in the middle? What exactly in their prediction has been disproved?”

While these seem valid questions as they make clear that random variability does occur in prediction and may even look like a “pause” I would like to bounce it back to you: When exactly would their prediction have been disproved? A 16-year pause? Twenty years? I mean: If this merely a coincidence then temperature anomaly should rapidly increase the following years. Or am I missing something?

peeke, if you can take one decade’s average and subtract the previous one, and find no rise in temperature, and there is no obvious reason like the sun or a volcano, then it would be at odds with expectation, but that has not happened yet. Note also that the land temperature continues to rise during this so-called pause, which is the canary for positive forcing being present, so that would have to stop too. From the graph I showed, you can see a similar behavior to now just before 1998. It seems the energy was being saved up. Give it another two years to rise 0.2 degrees.

Though they did not state where the rise betweeen 0.2 and 0.3C would occur or the exact magnitude, in AR4- WG1 they did state the maximum amount of variability by year 2030. This has been falsified since February of this year. Though one would think from the proponents that oly deniers were spreading mis-informtaion. That is untrue. There is a litany of errors that start with an ECS NOT of 50 years (heat going to the ocean) to stating that the pause is somehow attributable to natural variability. With the falsification of the 2030 magnitude stated in Ch 9 (IIRC), the comment that Judy and others have made that the IPCC is betting on an accelerating temperature rise in the near future is correct. However, none of the reasons offered change that they is a fundamental problem with the attribution of AR4. This is also why persons are calling out the IPCC on their increase in confidence. It starts and ends with attribution. Confidence should have gone down based on AR4. With the SPM indicating that the lower range of liekly ECS has dropped would be required fro confidence to remain the same. But note that in tthe SPM, they left out the most likely value of ECS. I

How did they miss the fact that the pause is the most important issue in the public debate on climate science, for well over a year now?

Interesting. Paging Mr. Monster. Judith Curry on line #5.

Especially given that at least some aspect of the discussion of the pause, to the degree that it exists outside of a certain arena, is that the pause is, essentially, not instructive as to long-term climate change.

‘The researchers used a climate model, a so-called coupled ocean-atmosphere model, which they forced with the observed wind data of the last decades. For the abrupt changes during the 1970s and 1990s they calculated predictions which began a few months prior to the beginning of the observed climate shifts. The average of all predictions for both abrupt changes shows good agreement with the observed climate development in the Pacific.

“The winds change the ocean currents which in turn affect the climate. In our study, we were able to identify and realistically reproduce the key processes for the two abrupt climate shifts,” says Prof. Latif. “We have taken a major step forward in terms of short-term climate forecasting, especially with regard to the development of global warming. However, we are still miles away from any reliable answers to the question whether the coming winter in Germany will be rather warm or cold.” Prof. Latif cautions against too much optimism regarding short-term regional climate predictions: “Since the reliability of those predictions is still at about 50%, you might as well flip a coin.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm

The 998/2001 climate shift is the most significant event in climate in recent times – and certainly therefore in climate science. The multi-decadal regimes are significant. They are the result of slow changes in the Sun – primarily solar UV and ozone interactions – amplifying through Pacific ocean and atmospheric circulation. The pressure of the control variable builds until there is an abrupt climate shift. Solar UV/ozone interactions change the sea level pressure in polar and sub-polar regions changing the strength of the polar cyclones. More or less cold polar water is pushed into the Peruvian and Californian Currents. When cool enough at the surface in upwelling zones – cold water upwells from the abyss setting up a series of positive feedbacks across the Pacific. The period that climate is in these quasi equilibrium warm or cool states varies from 20 to 40 years. It suggests that cooler conditions are much more likely than not to persist for another decade to three.

Much longer term the proxies show that we are in a 1000 year warm mode.

They also did not miss out on why the confidence could stay the same: they lowered the likely to 1.7 ECS.

They did miss out on support in SPM on why it is higher confidence, and they did miss out on falsification of the natural variability they put in AR4 by 2030. Or more properly, they have made the bet, as Dr. Curry points out, of accellerating increase in temperature, but without explaining in the SPM why this current falsification of a previous natural variabilty magnitude is correct or the mechanism of change for this wrt to the models.

The problem, with the reasons to date, is that it increases the time for ECS, or shows that the heat flux in the models was wrong. Extending the ECS changes the assumptions of feedback; and since temperature is a function of the mass/enthalpy state, getting the heat flux wrong is a tactic admission that the models are less useful than claimed; since “all models are wrong.”

AR5 will be interesting to compare to AR4 and see if the claims of increased confidence are supported. The way the hiatus was dodged does not leave me very hopeful.

I disagree. I think it is very instructive, because it suggests that the observed rate of warming was increased due to natural variability in the 1975 to 2000 period, and the observed rate of warming is now being reduced due to natural variability. If we want to have a reasonable estimate of the true underlying secular trend, then a fair accounting of the contribution of natural variability helps us do that. A reasonable estimate of underlying warming helps us to evaluate if GCM’s have made reasonable projections (it looks like they haven’t).

I think angst over the last part is why the IPCC summary does not really address the contribution of variability directly; recent slow warming is suggested to be unimportant because it is due to natural variability, but there are no comments on earlier rapid warming being less important because it was in part due to natural variability. It seems the IPCC just does not want to say that the underlying secular trend is lower than had be claimed in early AR’s, and much lower than the GCM ensemble has projected (a bit more than half the model projection seems likely to me). As Lucia likes to say, they should pull on their big boy pants and address this issue, because it is both good science and because that is needed to ‘inform’ good public policy.

Why has IPCC taken “the past 15 years” instead of “the past decade” for its comparison?

Duh!

Because over the past 15 years HadCRUT4 shows a very slight warming (of 0.038ºC per decade – rather than 0.05ºC per decade, as claimed by IPCC), whereas over the past 10 years HadCRUT4 shown a slight cooling of 0.02ºC per decade.

Pick yer period to sell yer message (an IPCC certainly does NOT want to admit that it has stopped warming and started cooling).

When discussing the potential of long term climate change, it is better to isolate shorter time frames than longer time frames. Is that it?

Say, today where I am is notably warmer than yesterday, even though we are further into the winter season when the sun’s rays provide less warming on a given area of the Earth’s surface in the NH, where I live.

With a minute. I just noticed that my outside thermometer reads 1 degree warmer than just a short while ago – even though we’re further into the winter season when the strength of the sun’s rays here in the NH are on the wane.

Joshua | September 29, 2013 at 2:17 pm |
So, manacker, let me see if I got this right.

When discussing the potential of long term climate change, it is better to isolate shorter time frames than longer time frames. Is that it?
===============
Are you saying that, in your opinion, using 15 years is scientifically significantly better than using 10 years?

Fair enough, but the honest thing would have been to stick with the sentence in the final draft:
“Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10 –15 years.”

and admit ignorance, and apologize for not paying attention to skeptical arguments (not to mention published literature) that addresses these issues.

I believe what is happening here is the beginning of the final demise of the IPCC.

IPCC has essentially ignored the impact of the pause in its AR5 report and not conceded that the models have failed to reproduce it. IMO this will result in an outpour of critique, which will result in the loss of a lot of any credibility it still had left after Climategate and the other past revelations.

IPCC has lost any semblance of impartiality and exposed itself as a partisan group, trying to “sell” a preconceived message rather than trying to objectively answer questions regarding our climate.

As a result, it will hardly be able to retain its image of being the “gold standard” source of scientific information on our climate.

By “hanging in tough” (and even exacerbating the problem by claiming an increase in the confidence level on late 20th C anthropogenic warming from 90% to 95%) IPCC has cut off its nose to spite its face IMO.

“Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to La-Niña-like decadal cooling … For the recent decade, the decrease in tropical Pacific sea surface temperature has lowered the global temperature by about 0.15 degrees Celsius compared to the 1990s”. SkS quote – 2013

ENSO variation goes in both directions. The indications are that ENSO variation added to global surface temperatures between 1976 and 1998. It has been almost 10 years since temperatures peaked in 1998. The planet may continue to be cooler over the next few decades as a cool La Niña phase of ENSO emerges. – Chief Hydrologist 2007

In almost every climate related news report on Yahoo News, CNN, etc., there are dozens of people in the comment section who clamor that climate science and global warming are big hoaxes because “their models” didn’t predict the “global cooling” of the last 15 years and that “they” don’t have a clue what might be the cause. Why is Judith suggesting that the only “honest thing” for the IPCC to do is to refrain to make mention of the likely effects of the Sun and of internal variability and thereby fake compete ignorance of the most likely explanation of the slowdown?

Richard, do you think that if any of the chapter groups had a good excuse for the pause that they would have not been falling over over themselves to include it? They were practicing something called avoidance. That is the most plausible explanation.

Richard, do you think that if any of the chapter groups had a good excuse for the pause that they would have not been falling over over themselves to include it? They were practicing something called avoidance. That is the most plausible explanation.
”

There is a perfectly valid explanation for the pause and it is given by Kasak and Xie in a recent paper [1].

Since Xie is a draft author of the more comprehensive report, I am sure we will see this referenced when that is made available. They deemed it not important for the summary report for unknown reasons.

It is a very solid explanation because amateurs like me can duplicate their results, as can other amateurs who have commented on the SkS blog [2]. Check these out:

“Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to La-Niña-like decadal cooling … For the recent decade, the decrease in tropical Pacific sea surface temperature has lowered the global temperature by about 0.15 degrees Celsius compared to the 1990s”. SkS quote – 2013

ENSO variation goes in both directions. The indications are that ENSO variation added to global surface temperatures between 1976 and 1998. It has been almost 10 years since temperatures peaked in 1998. The planet may continue to be cooler over the next few decades as a cool La Niña phase of ENSO emerges. – Chief Hydrologist 2007

Yes, Chief, it goes in both directions, like that 60-Hz hum that is rattling between your ears.

It goes in both directions and then it pretty quickly it cancels out. Who would have thunk it? I bet not an Aussie larrikin!

Chief evidently thinks the following SOI time series, which has been operable over the last 130 years, will continue to decline below its mean value. It will have to decrease markedly for the pause to continue.
If it even starts to level off then the GHG rise will resume

You have cited one “perfectly valid explanation for the pause” (Kasak and Xie), but there are many others.

Unfortunately, most of these are simply rationalizations with no real empirical evidence as basis (Chinese aerosols, short-term variability – ENSO, PDO, etc.).

The fact of the matter is, Webby, that no one knows why the global temperature has gone through ~30-year cycles of warming and slight cooling since the modern temperature record started, nor whether or not the current pause is simply part of a new 30-year cycle of slight cooling.

And this greatly weakens the case for the “CO2 climate control knob” hypothesis.

So webby, we can expect those promised more frequent and stronger El Ninos to hit us, any day now? Your nemesis, the Chief, is stifling you. You should consider moving your act to the SkS playground, since that is the source of your inspiration.

RE: “Stocker is right too: Because the literature cut-off was in March, there was little to go on.”

And why do *you* suppose that was?

The cut-off was in March 2012 or 2013? When AR4 came out in ’07 we were already what, 10 yrs into the ‘pause’ (with no mention of it) and in the ensuing 6 yrs, I’m guessing the hope was that the warming would continue as ‘expected’ so no need to look into it. Of course, until now, when suddenly it’s the ‘pause’ that was ‘expected’ . . . and yet unexplainable.

How many other fields can’t fully explain what they ‘expected’ to happen? Or better, how many fields would even propose they expected something to happen that they couldn’t explain? And still can’t even after it happened.

Mr Berry has some amends to make to those he murdered.
I suggest he start with making amends to Anthony Watts whose parents died prematurely of tobacco related illness. Then he can do the same to me.In my case I’ll take cash. Like the cash we got for the industry that caused my grandfather’s early demise, I’ll take cash from the murderous tobacco farmer.

As the United Nations prepares to release its latest report on “climate change,” leaked documents obtained recently by the Associated Press show the Obama administration and other governments are pressuring the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to cover up the fact that “global warming” essentially has been stopped for the last 16 years.

Of course a work of science, or even a scientific report, should not be subjected to negotiation and compromise, with input from various outside parties (in this case countries) as to what should be included and what excluded in the interest of how things will “sound” to the public. It’s really quite ludicrous.

The explosive revelations, already being described as “ClimateGate II” in the press, ….According to analysts, the leaked documents confirm once again that the global body’s alarmism about alleged “man-made global warming” is really a political ploy, rather than an issue of “science.”

Ah yes. “According to analysts….”

Reminds of of when the Weekly World News explain what “scientists say.”

And “already being described….in the press.”

Which media, specifically? The Weekly World News?

At any rate, I’m glad that now we’ve got the explanation for the politics all worked out.

Interesting how every sentence begins with Obama. Apparently in between dealing with Congress, DC shootings, Syria and Iran, he has been pestering the IPCC as well. I think not. This looks like just a polemic.

Joshua, I share your criticism but the fact that the article was published some days earlier and correctly predicted what actually happened gives it some credibility, I think.

Kim, as a poet you do not need to labour too much, I guess, to recognize the political incentives. The fact that modern politics uses scientists, as old politics used clergy, is not too difficult to explain, I think.

The fact that modern politics uses scientists, as old politics used clergy, is not too difficult to explain,

Indeed eg Tolstoy to Ghandi.

New justifications have now appeared in place of the antiquated, obsolete, religious ones. These new justifications are just as inadequate as the old ones, but as they are new their futility cannot immediately be recognized by the majority of men. Besides this, those who enjoy power propagate these new sophistries and support them so skilfully that they seem irrefutable even to many of those who suffer from the oppression these theories seek to justify. These new justifications are termed ‘scientific’. But by the term ‘scientific’ is understood just what was formerly understood by the term ‘religious’: just as formerly everything called ‘religious’ was held to be unquestionable simply because it was called religious, so now all that is called ‘scientific’ is held to be unquestionable

And note how the high priests of the new church meet in secret conclave to decide what should be included in the new cannon. Their actions, decisions and communications beyond the jurisdiction of any country in the world.

“The fact that modern politics uses scientists, as old politics used clergy, is not too difficult to explain”

Old politics?

Forget faux “Reverends” like Jesse Jackson, the USCCB (United States Conference of Catho9lic Bishops) is almost a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democrat policy. You name it, “global warming”, immigration amnesty, fighting welfare reform, and even socialized medicine/Obamacare.

The only place they really dissent (for many of them only because they have to) is on abortion and gay marriage. Their shock and hurt feelings at Obamacare forcing the Catholic Church to subsidize abortifacients has been hilarious.

I think there is another explanation of what happened. It was obvious in the months over which the AR5 was prepared that the IPCC had two choices; both of which were bad. They could either ignore the pause, and be unscientific; or they could acknowledge that their previous reports exaggerated the problem. Dr. Stocker deliberately chose the former; which is why Alex Rawls leaked the SOD.

When the time came, national delegations insisted the pause be inckuded. By this time it was too late; you cannot write a proper scientific report under that sort of pressure. Dr. Jarroud, on the Friday, said he had had 2 hours sleep in two days.

Your supertanker/rowboat analysis points out the immense momentum that the multibillion-dollar CAGW business has been able to build up.

The powerful collusion of separate interests, from politicians seeking increased tax revenues to industrialists seeking taxpayer funded subsidies and increased profits to guilt-driven ideologues seeking a simpler pre-industrial life to green lobby groups seeking power to scientists seeking funding to the media seeking increased ratings or readership has created a juggernaut, which can be compared to a supertanker.

But I think that the futile cries from the rowboat, which you describe, will become louder, thanks in great part to dedicated scientists, such as our hostess here, until they become a roar of indignation and outrage.

And if these coincide with an extension of the pause in warming of the past decade or more, they can well push the supertanker onto a new course, or stop it dead in the water.

Globally averaged, since 1959, when Keeling started CO2 record-keeping, we see twelve pauses (that is, downward trend uninterrupted by upward trend) on the 5-year averaged trend line, none of them longer than the initial ‘pause’ back through the 1960’s. Sure, some of them can be strung together to form larger pauses, but then the upticks have to be cherry-picked out to do that, a sure indication of biased interpretation.

Since 1959, we see ONE pause, the initial one in the 1960’s, and no other, on the climate trend line.

So. Talk about the pause. It happened in the 1960s. Or talk about the pauses, there have been a dozen of them since the 1960s. But don’t make crap up.

“since 1959” conveniently blinkers the discussion. Don’t you like the “pause” from 18060-1910 or the “pause” from 1940-1975? We would not want anyone to suggest this has happened before would we, so lets say “since 1959” . Like you say a sure indication of biased interpretation.

Now we are told that the dips in 80s and 90s were due to massive volcanic explosions without which the rise would have been steeper. There have been ZERO major explosions since Mt Pinatubo so the current “pause” proves both the volcanic forcing and supposed AGW to be TOTALLY incorrect.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL047563/abstract shows you’re doubly wrong. Since 2002, “..the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes. These events injected sulfur directly to altitudes between 18 and 20 km. The resulting aerosol particles are slowly lofted into the middle stratosphere by the Brewer-Dobson circulation and are eventually transported to higher latitudes.“

You will see repeated ~30-year cycles of warming and slight cooling. After the most recent warming cycle in the late 20th C (which is statistically indistinguishable from another one in the early 20th C before there was much human CO2), we have now entered a 10-15 year “pause”, which could well be the start of a new 30-year cycle of slight cooling (as we had before).

Over the same long-term period GHG concentrations from human GHG emissions (principally CO2) increased at a fairly steady exponential rate.

IOW the statistical correlation between CO2 and temperature is weak to non-existent – and where there is no robust statistical correlation, the case for causation is highly questionable.

That’s the key problem, which the “CO2 control knob” hypothesis (and IPCC’s CAGW premise that is built upon it) has.

And Bart, no amount of short-term rationalization on your part can overcome this basic problem.

You appear to be confused. My comments were restricted to the semantics of the term ‘the Pause’ based on observations. If you want to talk about other stuff, be my guest, but I prefer you stop making stuff up.

Small bumps and grinds in the temperature record are meaningless, but there have been a few notable “pauses” (multi-decadal periods of slight cooling lasting ~30 years each) over the past 160+-year record, with multi-decadal periods of rapid warming (also lasting ~30 years each) in between.

The most recent warming cycle appears to have ended around 2001, and it has cooled slightly since then.

The real unanswered question is whether or not the current “pause” is the beginning of another ~30 year cycle of slight cooling or not.

IPCC skirts this issue (as you did), but it still remains an unanswered question.

Your events clearly have noncyclic coincidental natural causes (such as volcano influences) or result from the additive interference of cyclic (such as seasonal) or pseudocyclic (such as the Hale pseudocycle and ocean oscillations) events of differing frequency with natural variability (such as from blowing past tipping points) and by far the largest single factor, human influence.

We can see this by plotting and removing the effects of each of the influences one by one from the overall results, and we can do this not just in global surface temperature but in all of the 50 essential climate variables identified by the WMO. When BEST did this for land temperatures, it clearly eliminated your ~30-year illusion and showed plainly the fingerprints and DNA of human carbon emission.

It’s hotter now (1997.58=midpoint of current 32-year mean; 0.320078) than it was 30 years ago (1967.58 midpoint, mean=-0.0629575). It was hotter 30 years ago than 60 years ago (1937.58 midpoint, mean=-0.0900933), and both are hotter than 90 years ago (1907.58 midpoint, mean=-0.399253), until you get to 120 years ago, when the rising backtrend for the 32-year means ending with the latest observation show a reversal (1877.58 midpoint, mean=-0.272289). In other words, there’s no freaking cycle of ups and downs, but only ups over time for a century on your 30 year grid. You can repeat this treatment for any ~30 year speculated period, failing to show a cycle for the whole range of endpoints on the available data.

The only way to procure a pattern of alternating ups and downs is to selectively detrend the whole curve from a cherry-picked pivot year, and then cherry-pick which dates to look at for ups and downs. That trick, we’ll call it “Girma’s Curry Trick”, is simply a form of lying.

Rather that cherry-pick shorter periods to prove a point, it is best to look at the whole temperature record.

I don’t know how good (or bad) your eyesight is (mine’s 20-20), but if you look at the long-term modern temperature record three multi-decadal cycles of rapid warming of roughly 30 years each become apparent, with two slight cooling cycles of about the same time length in between.

The early 20thC and late 20thC warming cycles are statistically indistinguishable. For the past 12 years we have been in a period of slight cooling; whether or not this is the beginning of another 30-year cycle of slight cooling is anyone’s guess.

These multi-decadal temperature cycles show no robust statistical correlation with atmospheric CO2, which has been rising at a fairly smooth exponential rate since measurements started.

Where there is no robust statistical correlation the case for causation is weak (and that’s your problem here).

The cycle is the thing that returns to its starting point, like a circle, exhibiting circularity.

Hence a 30-year up phase and a 30-year down phase returning to the same level form a 60-year wave, oscillation, or cycle.

WHICH YOU DON’T FREAKING HAVE HERE.

You have up phases of varying lengths and amplitudes depending on how you filter smaller phases, that on climate spans are rising consistent with the predictions of the GHE, correlating with GHG levels, with variability from other sources.

When discussing phases, it makes great sense to look at them. When discussing “The Pause”, it makes great sense to look at the phases that show pause. There is only one way to construct a singe ‘The Pause’ on climate-length timespans: smooth to 30-year mean or longer, and cut off the time before the most recent pause on that span. Which is how I selected a starting point in the 1950’s.

That there are a dozen or more ‘pauses’ of varying length since then if you don’t smooth, but _NO_ single pause on any smoothing equal to the past decade (because 2007 cuts the decade into two pauses).

So you can pretend you see cycles, which would be phases, but they just aren’t there by any rational standard of measure. And you can pretend to see a single pause in the past decade, but there isn’t one “The Pause” in the past decade by any rational standard of measure.

The following is is my understanding of “the pause” and its implications.
As background, consider that Kosaka & Xie [1] are able to explain the pause in terms of a compensation effect that is transient. In the IPCC document, Xie is listed as a draft author.

Xie realizes the pause or hiatus is a big canard and that their paper provides significant evidence that it is a oceanic disturbance.

I went through the analysis myself, and verified that the Southern Oscillation Index is the major compensating factor.

Since the SOI has been stationary with a 10-year running average that is near the long-term mean for over 100 years, we can’t expect that a noise-related pause to continue.
Look at the latest moving average trend and you can see how the SOI is reverting back to its mean by gradually getting colder. That is a red noise phenomenon to revert to the mean [2]. It can’t keep going much more if the past 130+ years of evidence are any indication.

The authors are evidently not noise jockeys — like most of the garden variety skeptics are — and deemed it useless to focus on a fragment of noise that won’t make any difference in the long term.

Yet “noise jockeying” is just what the IPCC has been doing for the last 30 years.

Having assured it was nothing to do with solar and ‘internal’ variation during the 80s and 90s , that suddenly becomes the explanation now. Still without admitting this must, by the same argument, be true of the earlier rise.

One is a dice rolling coincidence, that other is “science”. Pure hypocrisy.

Yet “noise jockeying” is just what the IPCC has been doing for the last 30 years.

Goodman, The correct data span is 130 years. The temperature anomaly is about 0.9C over that time. They can further remove sources of noise until the trend gets even more obvious, such as shown here:

That is why the majority of climate scientists aren’t noise jockeys.

OTOH, the analysis that you routinely put out is interesting and you may yet find an acorn somewhere in that slop that supports your position. But it is soooo much easier to find correlations with the correct view. We all know why you won’t do this though …..
That is the real hypocrisy.

Since the 2000-2010 decade was the warmest on record, and we are but 3 years into the next decade, maybe the “pause” will turn out to be statistically insignificant to the longer-term forcing from the human carbon volcano. Certainly we are getting closer to understanding the reasons for this plateau.

At this moment, it still makes sense for you to use the “warmest decade” argument.

Of course, if the current trend of slight cooling continues for another 5-6 years, this will no longer make sense, since the decade 2011-2020 will be around 0.05C cooler than the previous decade 2001-2010.

If, however,instead of “decades” one looks at 5-year periods, we already have 2008-2013 at around 0.04C cooler than the previous 5-year period 2002-2007.

Extrapolating this observed change over the entire 21st century would put year 2100 at around 0.6C cooler than 2012 (essentially reversing the entire warming of the 20thC).

So it’s only a matter of time until the currently observed slight linear cooling trend can be expressed as “second warmest decade” in the new century.

I see the specter of Stephan Schneider and his proposed honesty vs advocacy ethical stance climate scientists should adopt.

I believe your faith in the integrity of those whom you know in climate science is misplaced. The mishandling of the pause by government advising groups, not just the IPCC, can only be viewed as deliberate and consensus.

Personally, I despair at the injury to science.

I morn for those who entered climate science with high hopes and personal integrity.

Is there not some cadre of the willing who can be cabled together to redirect climate science that will explore natural variability while postponing developing high certainty probabilities?

There is a “systematic warm bias” that, according to Roger Pielke, Sr., “remains in the analysis of long term surface temperature trends.” Meanwhile, the oceans that store heat continue to cool.

The Earth has been in a cooling trend for a decade and the oceans have been cooling since 2002 with no end to the cooling in sight, according to Dr. Spencer. And as Dr. Pielke, Senior observed, in a period when the oceans are cooling there is no warming during that period.

Wagathon quotes Roy Spencer “The Earth has been in a cooling trend for a decade and the oceans have been cooling since 2002 with no end to the cooling in sight, according to Dr. Spencer.”

Dr. Spencer similarly advances novel critiques of evolutionary science “The last 50 years or so have seen real evidence come to light that random mutation and natural selection are incapable of building complexity. […] The Bible has said all along that life was originally created and has ever since reproduced ‘after its kind’.”

Wagathon, it’s far from evident that Dr. Spencer is well-qualified to critique *any* body of scientific evidence, in that Spencer’ reasoning processes are grounded in faith (not the reverse).

“Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.”

Amazingly enough, none of James Hansen’s degrees are in climatology or meteorology.

When you start losing the argument, you resort to ad homs, like all of your fellow arrogant elitist global warming catastrophists.

I have to agree with you Fan, if Dr. Spencer really does believe in creationism that is a little scary. There was an interesting court case presided over by a republican judge and GHW Bush appointee who handed down a pretty definitive ruling:

A PBS documentary was made about it. If you haven’t seen it I’d highly recommend it. I didn’t necessarily have to see it as I got a ‘B’ in Anthropology 101. Still, they (the scientists) put on a very convincing case:

My credentials are not important, but what is important is how Spencer’s claims stack up against actual measurements and data as collected and documented by other experts in the field. If in fact Spencer did make the claim that the “oceans have been cooling since 2002” then such a claim would be in direct opposition to the judgement and findings of other experts in the field. Furthermore, it would indicate that he isn’t keeping up or is flatly ignoring the fact that the oceans are seeing their highest heat content readings in decades.

This crap about religious beliefs disqualifying someone from being able to do science needs to stop. It is nothing but bigoted foolishness. Dr. Spencer would have never earned a Phd., if he had let his alleged belief in Creationism, or whatever, seep into his academic pursuit of understanding the science. He would have flunked every freaking test and quiz. Do you characters believe that all the scientific knowledge that humans have accumulated over the course of history was produced by atheists? Now watch one of them say it was agnostics. Pathetic ad hominem BS.

Newton died a long time ago, fanny. And he made his contributions to the advancement to science before he died. And this is the last time I will read or respond to your foolish BS. Please do not change your poison pen name, or your attention seeking silly signature.

Fan, I donno being an atheist myself I find it hard to understand how really bright people (far brighter than me) can believe in such obvious nonsense. Darwin supposedly became an atheist at the death of his daughter believing no god could be that cruel. Not very good reasoning to me. Gregor Mendel was a Catholic Monk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel
George Lemaitre (father of the big bang theory) was a Catholic Belgian Priest. A few notables who believed in God and were religious:

fan of *more* denigrations,
Intellectual giant Isaac Newton of the Principia was also
a student of alchemy. I guess there’s an imaginative
openness ter some enquirers that take them down by-
ways that timidly conventional followers of consensus
would not dare ter contemplate.
A serf.

Earlier heat content data to depth had coverage of about 15% – so is questionable.

But the data of changing cloud – and the most recent OHCA – are what they are and they are consilient. Yet you continue to ignore the data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions on the basis of nothing at all but bald assertions about what experts think. Obviously not all think that the evidence is ironclad for warmist propaganda.

OHC data since 2002 is the best we have yet and none of it shows the oceans cooling if that is indeed what Spencer said. Satellite derived data is not a good proxy for ocean heat content. It might tell you SST’s but not heat content at depth. You need to drop a probe in the ocean and actually measure the temperature.

Gates says, “You need to drop a probe in the ocean and actually measure the temperature,” and neglects to say the added amount he’d like to find requires accuracy to the thousandths of a degree and is far less than the variance simply due to our inability to accurately measure in such minute detail.

Figure SPM.1 tells very well, how significant the pause is from the point of view of empirical data. (It’s barely noticeable at all.)

From the point of view of climate models it’s more important. Many models had even without the pause a tendency to predict rather too much than too little warming in comparison with observations. With the pause the deviation starts to be statistically significant. The variability in the models may have too little auto-correlation, and the models seem to predict somewhat higher values for TCR than is likely based on empirical analyses.

That’s a point where SPM seems to fail. It jumps from discussion about historical warming to projections based on models without discussion on the reliability and potential biases of the models.

Another paragraph that I don’t like is

It is virtually certain that there will be more frequent hot and fewer cold temperature extremes over most land areas on daily and seasonal timescales as global mean temperatures increase. It is very likely that heat waves will occur with a higher frequency and duration. Occasional cold winter extremes will continue to occur (see Table SPM.1). {12.4}

That doesn’t make clear what a hot temperature extreme means: Is it an extreme in comparison to average temperatures at the time of the event or an extreme in comparison to some past temperatures? The paragraph is justified by science only in the latter interpretation, but I’m sure many interpret it to mean the more severe first alternative.

Nobody claims that the ten year averages tell about the behavior over the last 10 years. What the Figure SPM.1 does is to show both annual data and ten year averages. This combination tells clearly and correctly, what’s essential and what’s not as far as we want to learn qualitatively about the global temperature changes.

The hiatus has affected also the ten year average. The change is not insignificant for quantitative results as can be seen from the TCR estimates of the Otto et al paper. The present best estimate of TCR would be higher, if temperatures had kept on rising.

Yes, it shows how inept Otto was in his characterization. He could have and should have compensated for the SOI noise term, which would have put the TCR at 2C and thus reduced the uncertainty.

The pause is a noise artifact that should have NO bearing on the prediction of the eventual TCR. As the SOI reverts to its historical mean of zero and the underlying warming signal continues, the signal-to-noise ratio will continue to increase. Eliminating this artifact now is perfectly valid given the historical evidence of past SOI fluctuations.

It is a sad day when the CSM is more cogent in its commentary on climate science than is the IPCC in its own report for decision makers. To take one example:

“Still, the group, which relies on studies published in peer-reviewed journals for its overviews, didn’t have much to go on, acknowledges Working Group 1′s co-chairman, Dr. Stocker. “I’m afraid to say there is not a lot of published literature that allows us to delve deeper into the required depth of this emerging scientific question,” he says, citing a lack of adequate measurements of ocean heating, especially in the deep ocean, as one hindrance.”

So, Dr. Stocker, you admit that the question of “the missing heat in the deep oceans” is an emerging question and that there is not a lot of published literature on it YET you cite the “missing heat” as a partial explanation of the pause and you cite it again as an explanation of how you know that warming continues despite the pause. Sir, you sound like a drunk trying to explain to his pious wife why there is a hooker in her bed.

In case someone might miss my main point, there is no way that the “missing heat” should have been included in this IPCC report as something more than pure conjecture.

PS I saw Dr. Stocker give the Stockholm party line on Swiss TV a couple of days ago. When the interviewer asked him for an explanation for the “pause”, he fumbled and stumbled around, essentially saying it was simply a short-term phenomenon that had no impact on the long-term AGW trend, of which scientists were now even more confident than before.

I suffered through the whole teleconference audio and made detailed notes. I’ll spare you these but will give you my overall impression.

The four scientists involved stuck to the official consensus party line. They all defended the models based on “actual observations from 1990 to 2012” versus model simulations. The major change between AR4 and AR5 is that the worst case sea level projection by 2100 has increased from 0.59m to 0.82m, largely as a result of considering “rapid dynamics” of ice (an area that needs more work); otherwise the conclusions are pretty much the same.

Although it came up in the Q+A segment, the 21st century period of slight cooling was only mentioned voluntarily by one of the four, Gerald Meehl. He referred to it as a “hiatus”, where “warming was not very large over the last decade or so”. Models are able to simulate this “hiatus”. This short-term phenomenon will not change the relentless long-term greenhouse warming, and the “flip side” of the hiatus will be periods of accelerated warming. Natural fluctuations, including changes in ocean circulation and small to medium volcanoes, were cited as the principal reasons, rather than human aerosols, which actually decreased over the past decade.

Unfortunately IMO, two of the four resorted to outright fear-mongering. Brian Soden stated that he lived in Florida only 3m above sea level, so he has personal fears regarding the projected higher SL rises (worst case around 0.8m by 2100!). Linda Mearns stated that the term “winners and losers” has gone “in and out of fashion”, and that the biggest losers of a 3.7C warmer world would be poor undeveloped nations in the tropics, but that the recent floods in Colorado plus Hurricane Katrina showed that even rich, developed nations could become climate “losers” (despite the fact that Soden had conceded earlier that there is little evidence that hurricane number and intensity is affected by increased temperature from AGW). She also expressed concern that the policymakers would be too slow in reacting to the new information and that increased engagement between scientists and decision makers/implementers was needed.

Sea level expert, Tad Pfeffer was arguably the least “panicky” of the four, but he pointed out that even small, likely increases in sea level could have worse consequences than less likely cataclysmic changes. He also stated that a late summer “ice-free” Arctic could become a reality by the end of the century.

No “tough questions” were asked and the whole thing was simply a restating and defending of the IPCC consensus paradigm.

“He attributed the oversight to a tendency of each group working on each of the 14 chapters to rely on some other chapter to deal with the issue. And anyone who was thinking about it at all thought some other chapter should handle the issue.”

How terribly convenient. This is right up there with the dog crapped on my homework. Let’s just suppose for a second that the temps trended warmer than the models. Do you suppose they’d have forgotten to include that?

Here is an official summary of the IPCC meeting that presents many of the issues discussed in plenary, which countries spoke on each side, and how each issue was decided. Interesting to see if the hiatus-pause came up.

Judy,
a few days ago you quoted an article from SPIEGEL online in which a possible disagreement was outlined between a top German climatologist (Marotzke) and the German government. The quotes you reproduced, however, were focused on issues of scientific honesty. The Spiegel article explains how M. and the gov were pushing for two different replies to the ‘hiatus’:
“Despite resistance from many researchers, the German ministries insist that it is important not to detract from the effectiveness of climate change warnings by discussing the past 15 years’ lack of global warming. Doing so, they say, would result in a loss of the support necessary for pursuing rigorous climate policies. “Climate policy needs the element of fear,” Ott openly admits. “Otherwise, no politician would take on this topic.”

Science vs. Climate Politics

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Research would prefer to leave any discussion of the global warming hiatus entirely out of the new IPCC report summary. “In climate research, changes don’t count until they’ve been observed on a timescale of 30 years,” claims one delegate participating in the negotiations on behalf of German Research Minister Johanna Wanka of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Ministry for the Environment’s identical stance: “Climate fluctuations that don’t last very long are not scientifically relevant.”

At most, German delegates at the conference would be willing to include an admission that “the pace of temperature change has slowed” — a reinterpretation that doesn’t correspond to the latest research findings.

Germany’s highest-ranking climate researcher, physicist Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, is fighting back against this refusal to face facts. Marotzke, who is also president of the German Climate Consortium and Germany’s top scientific representative in Stockholm, promises, “We will address this subject head-on.” The IPCC, he says, must engage in discussion about the standstill in temperature rise.”

To pretend that ‘oops, we forgot’ when there were specific changes made to the July draft text concerning this issue and it was reported last week that the german minister of the environment wanted any mention of ‘ the pause’ removed (Der Spiegel), and it got removed, is nothing short of disingenuous.

Judy, nice spotting of this interview with Marotzke. Given that Marotzke told reporters only a few days ago that they would address this issue “head on” as you aptly featured a few days ago, it is discordant that he now describes the neglect of the issue as an “oversight”. I presume that Oppenheimer “extensive discussion” will be closely related to Box 9.2 of the Draft distributed to governments. I have a copy of this and commented on the many defects of Box 9.2 at Climate Audit a couple of days ago http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/24/two-minutes-to-midnight/. I’ll upload the Government Draft and comment on the differences.

” the misconception that natural variability must necessarily be a zero sum game. This is patently untrue. Natural variability can potentially change albedo so it’s not a matter of energy moving from one reservoir to another and back but rather more or less energy entering the reservoir from the sun throttled by albedo.

Failure to acknowledge that possibility makes *you* the denier.”

SpringyBoy, You obviously don’t understand the simple physical principles underlying this type of natural variability. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) is the difference in sea-level pressure measured at Darwin and Tahiti. This SOI when scaled into temperature units makes up most of the natural variability seen in global temperature records such as GISS, extending back to 1880.

You can see this in the top panel here below where I plot the scaled SOI on top of a warming trend.
The major gaps shown occur where major volcanic eruptions take place. Otherwise the profiles match wiggle for wiggle.

Since atmospheric pressure differences at sea-level cannot be sustained for great amounts of time, and must necessarily revert to a mean value near zero, you will see the SOI pseudo-oscillate about zero. This makes the SOI a zero-sum game. The only way the mean could differ from zero in the long run is if the mean atmospheric pressure changed in both sites, and the change was different at each site. There is no evidence of this happening, and the means in each location may in fact be changing in unison.

This is really too easy to understand and I am sure actual climate scientists must tire of explaining this, as it is likely blatantly obvious to them.

Albedo plays into the overall warming trend because it is a positive feedback on the CO2 forcing function which triggers the global warming.

ENSO is the largest source of interannual temperature variation on the planet. Something that has been known for decades.

The SOI responds to warm pools. When seas are warm around Darwin and cooler around Tahiti – air rises at Darwin causing low sea level pressures. Air falls at Tahiti increasing sea level pressure and cloud at lower levels. The trade winds pick up intensifying La Nina and ocean mixing. The reverse happens in El Nino.

A critically important thing to note is that the intensity and frequency of ENSO changes decadally. You can see it here in Claus Wolter’s MEI.

More frequent and bigger La Nina to 1976, more frequent and bigger El Nino to 1998, and larger and more La Nina since. The periods mirror the PDO modes showing that both have the same origin. It mirrors as well the warming and cooling episodes.

The multi-decadal regimes are significant. They are the result of slow changes in the Sun – primarily solar UV and ozone interactions – amplifying through Pacific ocean and atmospheric circulation. The pressure of the control variable builds until there is an abrupt climate shift. Solar UV/ozone interactions change the sea level pressure in polar and sub-polar regions changing the strength of the polar cyclones. More or less cold polar water is pushed into the Peruvian and Californian Currents. When cool enough at the surface in upwelling zones – cold water upwells from the abyss setting up a series of positive feedbacks across the Pacific. The period that climate is in these quasi equilibrium warm or cool states varies from 20 to 40 years. It suggests that cooler conditions are much more likely than not to persist for another decade to three.

The SOI time series is not stationary over periods of interest – the latest warming period and the current cooling for instance. ENSO is not stationary over 1000’s of years.

These are ocean and atmosphere circulations that cause large changes in radiant flux at toa. Webby’s fundamentally limited perspective results in a dogmatic misunderstanding of this science rather than any real insight.

I appreciate it. Now that we can use the SOI to remove the fluctuations in the global temperature record, the pause disappears and the underlying warming trend is revealed for all to see.

Using that as a model for projecting future temperatures, it becomes almost impossible for a pause or hiatus to continue to obscure the trend. The SOI has reached the end of its effectiveness as a compensating factor and the relentless underlying warming trend will once again dominate.

Webster, I seem to remember that solar had something to do with tropical ocean stuff like ENSO and SOI and PDO and such.”

PDO doesn’t do anything. It’s all SOI. If you want to attribute the latter to solar, you can go knock yourself out. Doesn’t matter because the SOI reverts to the mean, while the warming trend continues to increase.

Yet the SOI is what explains the fluctuation variance and the pause in the recent data.
However, the agenda-driven commenters like The Chief refuse to acknowledge this, because it does not suit the needs of their narrative.

The idea is not that ENSO doesn’t affect. The idea from way back is that it does. This has been typically misunderstood by space cadets like the webster who finally have to incorporate it through post facto rationalisation. You can fit the wiggles in the temperature record because ENS causes warming and cooling.

ENSO changes decadally as well. This is known to anyone who has a clue.

Reminds me of the way the UK CG1 enquiries managed to avoid assessing the science – the ‘sleight of hand’ as Phil Willis put it. Compare from above:

“[Marotzke] attributed the oversight to a tendency of each group working on each of the 14 chapters to rely on some other chapter to deal with the issue. And anyone who was thinking about it at all thought some other chapter should handle the issue.”

The first enquiry, a general inquiry from the Commons Science Committee was curtailed by the election. It cleared the UEA scientists of wrongdoing, but blamed the university for being uncooperative with information. The second enquiry was set up by UEA in conjunction with the Royal Society and chaired by Lord Oxburgh. It was called the Science Assessment Panel and its stated remit was to examine the university’s key publications – the key science in other words which had been most subject to comment. The third enquiry – today’s enquiry – is by the former senior civil servant Sir Russell. It will present an analysis of the emails and judge if the scientists involved cheated. So now, three enquiries all with different and complementary themes.

Certainly that’s how it sounded to Phil Willis, who chaired the commons committee:

“The whole purpose of having this if you like tripartite approach to the emails scandal as it was, was that Muir Russel would look at the emails, my committee was looking to make sure that there was a proper scrutiny process in place, and of course the Royal Society, headed by Lord Oxburgh, would look at the rigour of the science.”

Climate sceptics in particular were delighted. The UEA’s press release announced that Oxburgh would assess the science of the UEA’s most controversial papers. Skeptics assumed this meant it would assess the quality of the science, which they doubted. But they were to be disappointed. Lord Oxburgh told me the university had asked him not to assess the quality of the controversial science, but to check the integrity of the research, to make sure the scientists hadn’t twisted it to conform to a pre-set agenda, a charge on which they were swiftly exonerated by the Oxburgh review. Now it may have been a subtle difference to shift the remit from assessing the science to assessing the integrity of the science but it was a substantial one in the view of Phil Willis when he saw the Oxburgh report.

“Quite frankly I couldn’t believe it. It took us no further down the line at all from what the select committee report did or indeed from what the Muir Russell inquiry will do. I frankly think that there has been a sleight of hand in that the actual terms of reference are not what we were led to believe.”

[end transcript]

For SPM5, the draft led us to believe the hiatus would be addressed (but it wasn’t). For the UK enquiries, the terms of reference led us to believe the science at UEA would be addressed (but it wasn’t).

All of the so-called reviews which came after ClimateGate and purportedly cleared the suspects, were corrupted, and each in its own special way. A primer from the bullets points of each torsion of truth.
=================

That’s exactly the same as I have been thinking reading this Dale. The Climategate inquiries were a master class of deception and looking anywhere but where they would uncover the guilt. The British ruling classes have perfected this type of inquiry to an art form. In fact anyone familiar with the comedy series Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister will know the routine well.

The CS Monitor reporter wrote: “As the number of sunspots fall, solar radiation reaching Earth is reduced. While those reductions are tiny in absolute numbers, researchers have uncovered mechanisms by which the climate system can amplify the effect of those small changes.”
This is strange. The reduction may be “tiny” in absolute numbers. It corresponds to a reduction in average solar forcing of 0.20 W/m^2 from the fist to the second half of the recent 15 year period. That cancels about 2/3rd of the increase in greenhouse gas forcing over the same period. So, it’s not tiny at all in relative terms. Considering next the ENSO cycle, the slowdown in the rate of warming is completely unsurprising.

“Considering next the ENSO cycle, the slowdown in the rate of warming is completely unsurprising.”

Absolutely. I have been pushing this with a quantitative analysis that actually demonstrates the removal of the pause and reduction in fluctuation variance if this ENSO noise source is removed, yet it seems like the skeptics would rather keep their blinders on.

It is essentially the same as using noise-cancelling headphones. There are ways of removing the noise from the signal. We know the noise source in climate. We can remove it and we know that it won’t get worse, because it historically has stayed within bounds.
.

This is a crisis of leadership in the IPCC. It is the leader’s job to make sure all bases are covered. Clearly the present leader failed in that objective and should resign.

I have always maintained that the climate change problem should have been put to open tender. A consortium could have been put together to handle the problem effectively’ The UNFCCC, having swallowed the fiction that the ‘science was settled’ took the wrong path and landed the world in the present mess.

“As the number of sunspots fall, solar radiation reaching Earth is reduced. While those reductions are tiny in absolute numbers, researchers have uncovered mechanisms by which the climate system can amplify the effect of those small changes.”

Really? The why do the models not include any of them? e.g. cosmic rays. And why do these amplfication mechanisms only help cool the earth when Mother Nature stubbornly refuses to go along with the models? And why did IPCC deny that they could be a factor contributing to warming when the global temp went up.

‘I do think an argument can be made for the ‘pause’ being within a normal oscillation but I’d defer to WebHub and Chief Hydro and their ongoing argument. And the winner is….’

Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”

Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703

The PDO doesn’t do squat to explain the global temperature fluctuations compared to how well the SOI does it.

It’s really not that hard to do this Chief. Yet you seem so completely inept at doing any sort of quantitative analysis, and your little linkies and copy&pasties seem to be your crutch whenever you start to panic.

‘This study uses proxy climate records derived from paleoclimate data to investigate the long-term behaviour of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). During the past 400 years, climate shifts associated with changes in the PDO are shown to have occurred with a similar frequency to those documented in the 20th Century. Importantly, phase changes in the PDO have a propensity to coincide with changes in the relative frequency of ENSO events, where the positive phase of the PDO is associated with an enhanced frequency of El Niño events, while the negative phase is shown to be more favourable for the development of La Niña events.’ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025052/abstract

You can invert the SOI and take the first derivative of global tropospheric temperature anomalies and of the SOI – and test for correlation.

‘Our results highlight that an initialization of the upper-ocean state using historical observations is effective for successful hindcasts of the PDO and has a great impact on future predictions. Ensemble hindcasts for the 20th century demonstrate a predictive skill in the upper-ocean temperature over almost a decade, particularly around the Kuroshio-Oyashio extension (KOE) and subtropical oceanic frontal regions where the PDO signals are observed strongest. A negative tendency of the predicted PDO phase in the coming decade will enhance the rising trend in surface air-temperature (SAT) over east Asia and over the KOE region, and suppress it along the west coasts of North and South America and over the equatorial Pacific. This suppression will contribute to a slowing down of the global-mean SAT rise.’

It sure is relevant to near term climate prediction and SAT sure is slowin’ down. It must suck webster – you try and try and try but still get it all wrong. I wonder why that is? I’d frankly go for dumb as a doorknob.

,In a near-term climate prediction covering the period up to 2030, we require knowledge of the future state of internal variations in the climate system such as the PDO as well as the global warming signal.

The strange thing is that you (and several others) are posting this as a reply to a blog post that acknowledges the statement made by them in the summary for policymakers. “The result is a statement that the slowdown in the rate of warming over the past 15 years is – with medium confidence – due equally to natural variability in the climate system and to a combination of changes in what researchers dub climate “forcings” […]”

So, yes, they forgot to “mention” it through making an explicit “statement” about it. Maybe you can blame the title of this blog post.

The SPM moves things forward to this limited extent: It is now official mainstream science that nobody can agree on what the ‘most likely’ figure is for ECS. That means no economist can do a confident benefit:cost study based on this report and all previous attempts to establish the “social cost of carbon” are undermined.

The new low end of the range will mean there’s not much to worry about, while the top end spells catastrophe. So all results turn upon which end of the spectrum is favoured – and that has now to be a political decision because the scientists have abdicated.

Because of discounting, whether at realisitic rates or Stern’s ‘moral philosophy’ rates, the timing of future warming levels drives the NPV of both benefits and detriments. That timing is unguessable without a sensitivity figure.

If they try to claim that a decrease in solar activity is causing “the pause,” they’ll have a hard time explaining why the solar activity of the last half of last century–being higher than any period in 1000 years–did not mostly cause the recent warming.

Global warming obsessed schoolteachers are helping raise up generations that are worthless to the perpetuation of the American dream — only more drones for a failed secular, socio-Euroconomy living on others’ dribbles.

Your advanced link once again ignores that there has been no cooling in the stratosphere since 1995, and manufactures cooling for that era by moving the endpoints back to a time when el Chichon and Mt Pinatubo undoubtedly warmed the stratosphere.

So, to get around your stubborn refusal to answer the question, I will ask you a new question, why has the trend in stratospheric cooling lessened every year for the past 18 years when GHG have risen as they have?

Fan, basically the same chart that is reproduced in your link from ‘skeptical’ science. The one that shows no stratospheric cooling since 1995, or, if you insist on extending the endpoints beyond 18 years, why does the trend in stratospheric cooling decrease year after year while GHG concentration rises?

1. Church’s document is painfully out of date
2. He cites a well known believer in creationism

“In the early 90’s, it was shown that by combining Channel 2 data at
nadir with fractionally weighted data from 8 of the original 10 off-nadir views, a weighted measurement could be
derived that emphasizes a thinner layer of the lower troposphere centered at 4 km altitude (Spencer and Christy,
1992b). This virtual channel has come to be called MSU2LT (for Channel 2 Lower Troposphere). With the advent of
the AMSU products, the same philosophy can be followed using the 30 view angles of AMSU products. The newer
AMSU weighted lower troposphere view is now called MSUTLT (Christy et al., 2003). Figure 7 shows the weighting
function of the MSU2LT channel (labeled as MSU/AMSULT). The MSU2LT and MSUTLT channels remove most of
the stratospheric influence, but they are based on a wide angle swath that neglects zonal 3
(that is, east to west)
temperature gradients. As such, they are sensitive to temperature fluctuations that happen on timescales comparable
to the east to west drift in the satellite’s equatorial crossings and are thus subject to sampling errors. They are also
sensitive to direct surface emissions. “

“Confidence is low for a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the
middle of the 20th century, due to lack of direct observations, methodological uncertainties and
geographical inconsistencies in the trends. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global
increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, this masks important
regional changes: the frequency and intensity of drought has likely increased in the Mediterranean and West
Africa and likely decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950. [2.6.2.2]”

There of course was no Nuremberg styled trial when the Soviets fell in 89-90′, there is something wholly unsatisfactory from a historical perspective that certainly reflect poorly on the current post-Soviet states for this omission.

We should be discussing what the “science” community did for the “cause” of the AGW agenda over the recent decades and the obvious politics so consistently scrubbed by Dr. Curry and her followers in the meek capitulation and middling approach presented daily here. AGW wasn’t just wrong or about “science”, it was transcendental abuse of power and authority and a force of evil in the world.

They should lose their jobs, their funding and grants, acknowledge the political motivations for their efforts and some should certainly be jailed.
In a world of decay and rot this can’t be expected and we are all less because of this.

Based on plots at Wood for Trees the graph of David Rose starts in August 1997, which is as warm as average of 1998 and much warmer than the first half of 1997. Thus some of the comments of David Rose seem to be outright cheating.

I haven’t looked at the original data. Thus there’s a possibility that the starting month is not August as I think, but even if it isn’t that does not save Rose. At least the reference to January is badly off the mark.

“Thus some of the comments of David Rose seem to be outright cheating.”

____
Cherry-picking is quite standard for him. He does it so much his hands must be quite rough from all that picking. Judith’s continual links to him does her no benefit in terms of credibililty IMO. Might as well be associated with the Heartland Institute as it is the same motivated pre-selected data.

Rose says that there has been a 17 year pause. He cites (does not quote) the IPCC report:

“A footnote in the new report also confirms there has been no statistically significant increase since 1997.”

If that is correct, what difference does the start date of Rose’s chart make in the grand scheme of things?

Do you believe that the IPCC has addressed the pause issue honestly and adequately? Rose is just a snot nosed journalist/commentator. Shouldn’t the operators of the big publicly funded science machine be held to a higher standard?

I’m not fully satisfied with everything in SPM. I cannot tell yet what I think of the full report.

I wrote elsewhere this comment on the SPM

I don’t think that the SPM is really good for anything. It’s too brief for explaining anything clearly. Whatever is written there is often misunderstood and misused. It’s more an indication of what the delegates can agree upon than a proper presentation of the scientific content of the full report.

The TS has been much better in giving an overview of the scientific content. We’ll see soon, how true that is for AR5 WG1.

I should add that the text of the SPM didn’t change much in Stockholm. Thus it’s almost fully written by the scientists, but they had certainly in mind that it must be approved line-by-line. They had also received earlier comments from the governments before finalizing the latest draft in June.

Your pointing out the deficits in the “facts” that Rose puts in his articles is right on the money, but one must look toward the general conservative slant of the paper and its readers. In regards to accurate coverage of things related to science, there seems to be a history of poor preformance by the paper with this note from Wikipedia:

“Dorothy Bishop, professor of neuroscience at Oxford University, in her blog awarded the Daily Mail the “Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation”,[79][80][81][82] calling the Daily Mail’s article “the worst misrepresentation of a scientific article in a national newspaper.”[83]

Sloppy writing. If he starts with the 1998 El Nino, then there is obvious cherry picking. If he starts with the La Nina that bottomed out in January 1998, then the warmists can say “look – no pause.” The point he was trying to make, that there has been no (reported) net warming since 1997 seems accurate from the graphs, though I agree that it looks like the real start date is August/September.

I suspect the last line Pekka is complaining about was a typo. But for that, he should certainly be hung from the nearest bristlecone pine tree.

As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to +0.15] °C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951–2012; 0.12 [0.08 to 0.14] °C per decade).

The uncertainty ranges are 90% ranges. At this level the warming from 1997 has a range that extends to negative values. Thus the statement is technically correct.

That footnote was one of the additions made during the Stockholm meeting, and an addition that requires some changes in the full report as well, as those numbers cannot be found from the report but were calculated by the lead authors at Stockholm according to reports from the meeting.